Test of Fire (1982)

by Ben Bova

  "You know," Joanna was saying, "I think Deitz's rat poison extract tastes better than this stuff."

  Alec grunted. "How can you taste anything? It burns the taste buds off your tongue."

  "It's strong, all right." Joanna stared down at her cup for a moment, then smiled up at Alec. "I had no idea you were so strong. You handled that miner as if he were a toy."

  With a shrug, Alec answered, "Spend as many hours in the centrifuge as I do and you'll get strong, too."

  "You really are dedicated" she said softly.

  He didn't know what to answer to that one.

  Joanna was watching him, her large almond-shaped eyes almost as dark as his mother's.

  "Doesn't anything interest you," she asked, a smile toying at her lips, "except the mission to Earth?"

  "A lot of things interest me. But the mission comes first."

  "Oh. I see."

  "The life of the whole community depends on this mission," he said gravely. "If we don't get those fissionables, and soon, we'll be in irreversible trouble."

  She nodded thoughtfully. "And that's why you've been so . . . inaccessible?"

  The games they play, Alec thought to himself.

  Think of me before anyone or anything else. But he knew that he played the same game himself.

  "I'm in training, Joanna. Facing a full Earth gravity is like carrying six times your normal weight. Half the people here can't stand it, their bones have become too brittle. And then there've been the classes in military tactics, logistics, all the planning ..."

  "You've been involved in those classes since we all were children," Joanna said.

  "Yes," he said, "and it's paid off. Did you know that the Council's adopted my plan for the mission? I worked it out with old Colonel Dunn, all the details, the men and equipment, the timing — everything. They accepted it over Kobol's plan."

  "No, I didn't know. That's wonderful." But her voice was flat, plainly uninterested.

  "I've even studied the old tapes of Earth's weather . . . rainfall and temperature changes, things like that."

  "But what about you?" Joanna asked. "What do you want out of all this?"

  "Me?" Suddenly he was puzzled. "I want to lead the mission." There was more to it, of course, but he had no intention of discussing that with anyone.

  "But why? What's the reason . . . your own personal reason?"

  Alec did not answer. He couldn't.

  Joanna made an impatient huffing sound. She turned squarely to him, kneeling, sitting on her heels. "Alec, what do you want? Why is the Earth mission so, so . . . all-encompassing for you? Is it because of your father/ what he did? Or is it to keep your mother secure as Chairwoman of the Council, or what?"

  He edged away from her. "It's not for my mother, and it's certainly not for my father. It's for me. I'm going because I want to go. It's my life."

  "You enjoy risking your life."

  "Don't get so personal," he said. "It's not polite."

  Her mouth was a determined thin line. "Alec, don't give me any of that politeness crap. We've known each other since we were toddlers and I want to know why you're so anxious to throw your life away. It frightens me!"

  "I'm the man best qualified for the job. Nobody in the community, from Kobol on down, has scored as high as I have in all the physical and mental tests. I enjoy doing what I've been trained to do . . ."

  "And she trained you," Joanna said. "She's brainwashed you."

  Alec jumped to his feet. "I think you'd better leave, Joanna. Either you don't understand or you don't want to."

  "No, Alec. It's not either of those. I do understand . . . better than you do. I want to see you living your own life, not hers. Why should you throw yourself away for her career, her revenge?"

  "Get out!" Alec shouted.

  Defeated, Joanna got to her feet and went to the door. She opened it, turned her head toward Alec briefly and smiled sadly at him. "You poor fool."

  He was almost asleep when his mother finally returned home. For hours he had lain on the air mattress in his own cubicle, the lights off, staring at the hand-woven tapestry that concealed the water tank and fuel cell, listening to the mattress sigh every time he moved, trying to turn off his mind, become a blank, a cipher, a nothing. But every time he shut his eyes, he saw that miner's leering face. It shifted and melted into the pictures of his father that he had seen. His father, who had left the Moon the day he had been born.

  "You're sleeping?"

  Alec's eyes snapped open. His mother was standing in the doorway, framed by the light from the main room.

  "No." He reached up and flicked on the overhead lights. She looked very tired.

  Watching her as she stepped into his cubicle and took the chair next to his bed, Alec could see why every man in the settlement desired her. Lisa Ducharme Morgan was an enchantress, a dark beautiful sorceress. Compared to her, Joanna and the other girls his own age were pale and insubstantial.

  But Lisa was a cool beauty, a distant Diana or Artemis, perfectly attuned to the task of governing this tiny hothouse of transplanted humanity.

  "I heard about your roughnecking," she said quietly. "What were you trying to prove?"

  "That you're not a whore," he answered, and immediately regretted it.

  But she didn't even blink. "Oh, that again? Another little benefit we have to thank your father for."

  "Has the Council voted?" he asked.

  "No." She shook her head wearily. "The debate drags on. Kobol's people are trying every trick they can play—even claiming that you're too emotionally unstable to lead the mission. I wouldn't be surprised if that fight wasn't arranged deliberately."

  Alec thought it over briefly. "It could have been," he admitted.

  She leaned toward him, suddenly blazing with intensity. "Then can't you understand how important it is for you to hold your temper? You broke every social rule we have today; how do you think the Council members will react to that? Save your anger for the real enemy, or you'll ruin everything for both of us!"

  With an effort, Alec kept his voice level. "All I want to know is when the Council will vote, and whether or not I will win."

  She stared at her son for a long moment. Alec looked back steadily into those endlessly deep, infinitely dark eyes. His own eyes.

  "The vote will be tomorrow morning. I think we will win."

  "Then I'm going to Earth."

  "Yes. Just as your father did," she replied bitterly.

  Chapter 10

  Alec snapped awake the next morning like the sudden step from darkness into full sunlight up on the Moon's surface. He dry-bathed quickly and pulled a black jumpsuit over his trim frame. His mother was already dressed and waiting for him in the apartment's main room. She handed him a cup of hot soybrew.

  "I've decided to bring you with me to the Council meeting," Lisa said.

  He took a burning sip of the brew. "Kobol's going to be there?"

  "Of course."

  Alec watched her primp her thick, wavy hair in front of the room's only mirror. The blue-gray suit she wore was simple, even severe, from its high Chinese collar to the loose-fitting slacks that ended in foot slippers. Still, when she raised her hands over her head that way . . . when she walked and her hips swayed rhythmically . . . Alec heard all the whispered gossip again, all the taunting shouts from childhood. He could feel his face burning. He clamped his teeth tightly together.

  Lisa turned to him. "You needn't look so grim. I told you that we'll win the vote, and we will. Now come along."

  The Council chamber was purposely kept austere.

  The rock walls were unfinished, bare, as rough as the day the chamber had been blasted out of the virgin lunar stone. There were no decorations at all, nothing in the room except the big circular table and chairs, and a single viewscreen hung in the corner opposite the chamber's only door.

  Most of the Council members were already seated around the circular table. Lisa swept in regally, extending her hand to the men near
est her chair, smiling her hello to the others. She allowed Alec to hold her chair for her, then directed him to a chair almost exactly across the table, which had been set up for him beforehand.

  "I thank you for the courtesy of allowing me to invite Alec to join us this morning." Lisa smiled sweetly to the Council.

  Alec kept his face blank as he took his chair. It was not polite to use your position for a point of personal privilege, but it would have been even more impolite for a Council member to object to Lisa's request. But how will this affect their voting? he wondered to himself.

  Several Council members nodded to Alec. He knew them all, of course. Nine men, six women.

  But three of them were still missing: Kobol and his two closest allies.

  "That's the chair your father used to sit in," said the fat old fool next to Alec.

  "We saved it for you. Perhaps in a few years you will grace the Council with your membership."

  Alec nodded curtly. He did not trust himself to say anything.

  Kobol arrived at last and all conversations stopped. Flanked by his two henchmen, he stood for a moment at the door and looked straight at Lisa. She returned his gaze without wavering.

  Then his eyes flicked away and he went to his chair.

  Alec watched him, and knew that Kobol wanted the Council chairmanship, wanted to rule the lunar settlement, and especially wanted Lisa. And Alec felt a special brand of hate for Kobol. The man was his mother's age. Tall and spare, his bony face looked cadaverous to Alec. Deepset eyes that were almost impossible to see under their graying, shaggy brows. His teeth were large, too prominent, horsy. He had worn a bushy mustache as long as Alec had known him. At first, Alec had thought it was to show that he wasted no extra water or power on shaving. More recently, though, Alec had come to the conclusion that Kobol's mustache was there to divert attention from the fact that he was going bald.

  As he sat at the Council table, at Lisa's right, he said in his reedy, nasal voice, "Sorry to keep you waiting. Let's get on with it."

  Lisa allowed a slight smile to flicker across her lips. "We resume the adjourned session of yesterday" he said for the microphone link to the central computer file. "The question before the Council is, who will command the upcoming expedition to Earth. The nominees are Councilman Martin Kobol and Citizen Alexander Morgan. Arguments have been heard and a motion for a vote was tabled at the conclusion of yesterday's meeting."

  She glanced around the table. "Are there any questions before we vote on the motion?"

  "I have a question," said Councilman LaStrande. He looked like a wizened old gnome to Alec, diminutive, a scraggly beard sprouting from his chin, his eyes huge behind thick glasses.

  Lisa acknowledged him with a nod.

  LaStrande pushed his chair back and stood up.

  Jabbing a gnarled finger at Alec, he said, "Citizen Morgan is a very talented and capable young man. Everyone agrees on that. But he is young. Too young, I fear, to lead an expedition of such critical importance ..."

  "But the Benford expedition of . . ."

  LaStrande cut him down with an imperious gesture.

  "Let's not waste our time by arguing about previous expeditions!" His voice filled the room.

  "Some have been successful, some have not. I might point out that Morgan's own father is responsible for the most disastrous expedition of them all, which is the direct cause of the crisis in which we now find ourselves."

  Alec seethed in silent fury. So LaStrande has gone over to Kobol's side. Did my mother count this in her calculations about the vote?

  Lisa fixed LaStrande with a cold gaze. "Surely you're not suggesting that my former husband's actions should bar my son from assuming his rightful duties as a citizen?" Her voice was razoredged.

  "Of course not," LaStrande replied smoothly, "but the Council must consider that every action has a cause. We are critically short of fissionable fuels. Why? Because twenty years ago Douglas Morgan led an expedition Earthside and refused to return here. Refused!"

  "But he sent the nuclear fuels we needed," said the fat man next to Alec, his voice a placating whine.

  LaStrande nodded. "Of course he did," he replied, dripping sarcasm. "And five years later, he was pleased to allow us to have a little more of the fissionables we need to remain alive. And then a third time, five years after that, he doled out a bit of nuclear fuel to us. But nothing since then. He has refused to send us any further shipments of fissionables, despite all our efforts and entreaties. For the past five years he has held us hostage to his renegade ego. And for the past five twitching years we have sat here politely discussing what we should do, while our fuel reserves dwindle toward zero."

  The Council members mumbled to each other and shifted nervously in their seats.

  "Morgan is still down there Earthside, turning himself into some sort of barbarian emperor and thumbing his nose at us!" LaStrande's powerful voice rang against the rock walls of the chamber.

  "He knows how desperately we need those fissionables. He knows we will all die without them. But does he care?"

  "No!" several Councilmen shouted.

  "And now we're expected to follow the lead of his wife, and send his whelp down there? To help us obtain the lifeblood we need? Or to help further Douglas Morgan's schemes for setting up an empire on Earth that will eventually kill us all?"

  Several Council members pounded the table and roared their approval of LaStrande's attack.

  Kobol sat back, idly tugging at his ear, saying nothing and looking inscrutable behind his mustache and thick eyebrows.

  Alec burned with anger. He clenched the arms of his chair, coiled inwardly and was ready to leap to his feet to shout them down. But then he looked at his mother.

  She sat there silent and unmoving, an ice-queen, waiting for the fools to shout themselves out. Only her eyes were alive, and they blazed with cold fury.

  The Councilors' shouting raggedly tapered off to a few scattered mumbles, then went dead. The chamber became absolutely silent.

  Then, in a voice that Alec had to strain to hear, Lisa said, "Councilman LaStrande, your concern for our future and well-being has led you beyond the bounds of politeness and common sense. Surely you don't believe that the offenses of the father taint the son—and the wife, as well."

  LaStrande blinked his watery frog's eyes at her.

  "I, eh ... I merely wanted the Council to, em, to consider all the facts of this matter."

  "Including," she countered, steel-hard, "the fact that I have lost a husband. Renounced him, years ago. Including the fact that my son, my only child, has been raised without a father, and feels all the taunts and sick little innuendos that you have so rashly brought into this debate. Including the fact that my son has volunteered to head this dangerous expedition so that he may prove to all the foul- mouthed and petty-minded fools in this community that he is his own man, not a duplicate of his traitorous father! Include those facts in your considerations, Councilors. Include them all!"

  They all sank back in their chairs, as if pushed by the force of Lisa's words. LaStrande sat down and studied the table top before him. Kobol smiled wanly and crossed his legs.

  "Madam Chairwoman" called white-haired Catherine Demain, sitting two seats to Lisa's left.

  Lisa nodded to her.

  "I'm sorry that this debate is reaching such an unfortunate level of incivility," she said, without getting up from her chair. "But a critical point has been raised by this outburst. Douglas Morgan has committed treason against us. There's no other word for his actions, even though I counted Doug among my closest friends on the day he left for Earthside. The question is, why did he do such a horrible thing? Why did he turn against us? Is there some factor in his psychological makeup that—forgive me—might have been inherited by his son? Or is it . . ."

  Alec shot to his feet without thinking about what he was doing. Barely controlling his voice, he said, "I will not sit here and listen to my mother and myself being discussed like two specimen
s in a biology lab."

  The Councilor at his right reached for his arm, but Alec pulled away and started walking around the table toward Catherine Demain.

  "Since I volunteered for this expedition I have been subjected to every possible physical and mental test that the medical staff could devise. My record is available to all of you for the most intense study."

  He stopped at the Councilwoman's chair. She had to turn and look up to see him. Clutching the chair's high back and looming over her, Alec asked, "Have you studied my record?"

  "Yes, of course I have."

  "Is there any indication of any imbalance whatsoever?"

  Alec found that deep inside him his anger was being supplanted by another emotion: not joy, exactly, but a thrill, an excitement, the tingle of power.

  "No," Catherine Demain replied softly. "All of your tests were . . . well, you got excellent ratings."

  "You yourself ran many of those tests," he said, looking down at her.

  She nodded and turned away from him.

  Alec swept the room with his eyes. "I know that I'm young. I know that my father failed us all — but he failed no one so badly as my mother and myself. And I also know that I've scored higher in every test, from word-association to heavy gunnery, than any citizen in this community. If my name were Kobol, or LaStrande, or Nickerson, you wouldn't have had the slightest hesitation in approving me to head the expedition. That is the truth and we all know it."

  "You are out of order," Lisa said firmly. "Apologize to the Council and return to your seat." But her eyes sparkled.

  He grinned at his mother. "Sorry. I beg the Council's indulgence."

  As he went back to his seat, one of the younger women Councilors called for the floor.

  "Councilor Dortman," Lisa acknowledged.

  Sylvia Dortman had been a strong supporter of Alec's nomination, one of Lisa's most dependable allies.

  But now she looked troubled. "There's no sense trying to ignore the problem that's bothering all of us," she said. "And that problem, quite simply, is trust. We trusted Douglas Morgan and he failed us. Deliberately. Can we trust his son?" Before anyone could reply, she quickly added, "I'm not questioning Alec's loyalty or strength of purpose. I'm not questioning his physical or mental abilities. I'm not even questioning his intentions. But the basic fear remains. His father was just as capable and well-liked and respected—more so, from what I've been told. And Douglas turned traitor. We don't know why. Equally, we don't know what Alec will do when he reaches Earth."